Greetings to all CSU faculty and staff members. I hope that you continue
to find these e-mail updates informative and helpful, and I thank you
for your ongoing feedback.

Last month, our Board of Trustees approved a 2001/2002 budget request
for the CSU. We have requested a $380.9 million increase in our state
appropriation, an 11.7 percent increase over the current year. This increase,
along with the revenue projected from enrollment growth, would bring the
total CSU base budget to nearly $3.65 billion.

The budget request focuses on four key priority areas: ensuring access
for students; maintaining high educational quality, in part through recruiting
and retaining the best faculty and staff; improving student academic preparation
through K-12 collaborations; and helping to build California's economy
by investing in key academic programs.

Of particular interest to faculty and staff is our request for a total
compensation increase of six percent. Four percent of that increase would
come from ongoing money as agreed to in our partnership with the governor;
an additional two percent would come from funding above the partnership
agreement. Our projections indicate that this increase would further reduce
the CSU faculty salary gap. (Due to the wide variety of staff positions,
we are unable to make similar institutional comparisons of staff salaries.)

The CSU budget request has now been forwarded to the state Department
of Finance for inclusion in the state budget. In January, Governor Davis
will submit his version of the state budget to the legislature. From March
through June, the legislature will hold hearings and make its revisions
to the budget. The governor typically approves a final version of the
budget in July. For more budget information, and for the text of the 2001/2002
CSU budget request, please see
http://www.calstate.edu/budget/.

I invite you to respond to this e-mail with your comments or questions
about the new budget or any other systemwide issue. Due to the large volume
of e-mails, I will not be able to respond to your messages individually.
However, if you send in your questions by November 20, I will post responses
to the most frequently asked questions at
http://www.calstate.edu/Executive/ by December 4. I will
send campus-specific questions to the appropriate campus president.

One brief "housekeeping" note: Our technology staff has asked
me to remind you that these e-mails are distributed through the all-employee
list for each campus. Though we are unable to remove the names of current
employees, we are continuing to remove outdated addresses and add correct
addresses for new employees. We appreciate your patience as we continue
to update these lists.

Thank you again for all you do to make the California State University
an outstanding institution.